What’s in your drinking water?

Published: Wednesday, May 16, 2012 at 8:05 p.m.

Last Modified: Wednesday, May 16, 2012 at 8:05 p.m.

Lost your bowling ball in the bayou? The cleanup might have helped find it.

More than 1,200 volunteers removed more than 18 tons of garbage from Bayou Lafourche during the first Clean Up Bayou Lafourche event held in March.

The cleanup effort spanned the entire 106 miles of Bayou Lafourche from Donaldsonville to Leeville.

Nicholls State University geomatics students inventoried the results of the effort to show the volume and oddity of garbage that ends up in Bayou Lafourche, the source of drinking water for nearly 300,000 local residents.

Some of the odd items pulled from the bayou include bowling balls, firecrackers, ammunition canisters with live ammo, mailboxes, street signs, cell phones, Power Wheels riding toys, half of a car and Army-issued Meals Ready to Eat, also known as MREs.

They also found plenty of evidence of dumping, pulling appliances, batteries, building materials, car parts, 55-gallon drums, tires and a lawn mower from the bayou. They pulled 1,269 items of these from the bayou.

Other categories included food and drink items, including plastic and glass bottles, cans and plastic eating utensils — about 33,115 of those items were pulled from the bayou. Cleanup volunteers pulled another 1,851 items related to fishing and boating, such as buoys, buckets and ice chests, and 4,672 pieces of smoking trash such as lighters and cigarette butts. More than 270 personal hygiene-related items topped off the list, including diapers, syringes and prescription bottles.

Volunteers cleaned up 40,000 pieces of garbage during the three-hour cleanup, which broke down to an average of 350 pounds of trash per mile of bayou.

“A lot of kids and people of all ages got involved,” said Hugh Caffery, chairman of the Bayou Lafourche Freshwater District. “It meant a lot for people in the community.”

The cleanup was sponsored by the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program, Keep Louisiana Beautiful and the Bayou Lafourche Freshwater District.

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